All news on this page courtesy of the The Telegraph Newspaper, London, UK

DATE 15/July/1997

Minister pledges new research on Gulf war illness

THE Government unveiled a new policy on so-called Gulf war syndrome yesterday, doubling the resources to be spent on research and promising greater openness.

More than £6.5 million is to be spent over the next three years on existing research programmes and a new one to analyse the cumulative effect of vaccines and tablets given to British troops to protect them from biological weapons. John Reid, the Armed Forces Minister, said he had attempted to create a 20-point policy that offered practical help to all veterans and Service personnel who risked themselves on behalf of Britain.

Some veterans campaigners welcomed the announcement and said it was long overdue but others said they were disappointed that the policy contained no promise of new compensation for ill veterans.

"All Gulf veterans will have prompt access to medical advice, there will be appropriate research into Gulf veterans' illnesses and the Ministry of Defence will make public any information it possesses which is of potential relevance to veterans' illnesses," Dr Reid said. "We are pledging our resources behind this. We have today doubled the resources allocated to the issues concerned with Gulf War veterans. Every piece of information I have will be made public."

Dr Reid said everyone "owed a debt of honour" to the Servicemen and women who fought in the Gulf. He stressed that the relationship between the new Government and the veterans would be marked by "openness and dialogue". Evidence of this came from a lunch-time meeting he had yesterday with veterans and campaigners.

Tony Flint, 49, the co-ordinator for the National Gulf Veterans and Families Association and a sufferer from the syndrome, said: "This announcement is long overdue. We have been banging our head against a brick wall for the last few years. "But it comes too late for some of the men. I know of 133 Gulf veterans who have died already."

Hilary Meredith, a lawyer acting on behalf of some veterans considering action against the MoD for negligence, said "It is now more than six years since the war ended and still there has been no offer of financial help for these men and women who risked all for the sake of this country. Many of them are now living on the breadline totally incapacitated by the illnesses the contracted in the Gulf."

While marking a change of tone from the policy of the former Tory administration, Dr Reid's announcement did not amount to a substantive change because there is still no definitive proof that a single syndrome exists.

Dr Reid said there was no grounds for one-off payments to ill veterans because the existing system of war pensions offered, in his opinion, a good way of providing financial support without having to issue legal proceedings for damages.